Connecticut Moves Toward Public Health-Insurance Plan

A local version of the national fight over whether to create a new, government-backed health-insurance plan took a dramatic turn yesterday: Democrats in the Connecticut Legislature overrode a veto from the Republican governor, putting the state on a path to create a new public plan open to everyone.

A board will create the outlines of the new program, which is supposed to launch in 2012, the Hartford Courant notes. Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed the bill because of the cost, which she said could be $1 billion a year.

Both supporters and opponents of the bill can look next door to Massachusetts for ammunition: That state’s universal health-care insurance plan has significantly reduced the number of people without insurance, but the cost has been high.

The Legislature didn’t quite have enough votes to override the governor’s veto on a separate bill that would have allowed small businesses, municipalities and nonprofit groups to join the state’s big health insurance pool.

Comments (5 of 13)

What is all this fuss about the cost of healthcare? I pays $70 per month out of my paycheck for a nice healthcare plan and I can choose my doctor. Its a lot of money but it is less than I pay for beer in a week. Why is everyone complaining about the cost of healthcare? Its stopid.

I think American healthcare is the greatest in the whole world. I am a proud american and I always vote
republican. I do not want no communist healthcare like they got everywheres else.

12:25 pm July 22, 2009

Taxes Will Go Up ! wrote :

The businesses won't want to come to Connecticut because the taxes will increase to pay for this.

9:15 am July 22, 2009

Dr. Rand wrote :

Why on earth would anyone advocate an expanded health system based on Medicare? Are these guys really as clueless as their blogs make them seem?

What are the problems with Medicare? Here's a short list:

1. $trillions in unfunded liabilities (it's basically a bankrupt system).
2. It's a heavy politicized system with constant meddling by those idiots in Washington.
3. 132,000 pages of regulations, often conflicting, always confusing.
4. An opaque reimbursement system that often changes without any notice to doctors.
5. Reimbursement so low that it requires $billions in cost shifting.
6. If we immediately went to a Medicare fee schedule for all Americans, thousands of hospitals and doctors would be out of business overnight.
7. Government bureaucrats, not your doctor, deciding what's going to be covered. And it will only get worse in the future as the system runs out of money.
8. Medicare is strongly anti-physician (ever go through an 18-month appeal so they can sent you an extra $30?).

8:09 am July 22, 2009

yalie yardbird wrote :

send them all to yale so it can experiment on them

11:21 pm July 21, 2009

That's nice wrote :

Too bad there won't be anyone left in this State by 2012. You can't get a good job here anymore and you can't afford to live here.